The Serial Universe

by J.W. Dunne

This book follows 'An Experiment With Time', and examines the implications of Dunne's 'Serialism' for the physical sciences. Most of the book is accessible to the interested non-mathematical reader, and you are unlikely to find a better short history of the arguments and experiments giving rise to quantum theory than that found in part three.

122 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1934

About the author

John William Dunne was an Irish aeronautical engineer and author. In the field of parapsychology, he achieved a preeminence through his theories on dreams and authoring books preoccupied with the question of the nature of time. As a pioneering aeronautical engineer in the early years of the 20th century, Dunne worked on many early military aircraft, concentrating on tailless designs, producing inherently stable aircraft.

Reviews

[Nikita Danilov]

This book is a treatise in the discipline all but extinct in the 20th century: natural philosophy. Sit down in a comfortable armchair in a dark room and start meditating. If you as imaginative as J. W. Dunne you will eventually, by the sheer force of introspection, discover special relativity, Minkowski's metric, quantization of action and immortality of your soul. Then, you have some dreams.

[Ethan Cardus · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There is adventure in eternal life. There is none in eternal death. And I am all for adventure.”

Not as good as An Experiment With Time. A really good explanation of Serialism in the first half but then he tries to link in into quantum mechanics in the second half and I didn’t quite get it.